From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,cd24ffa36ebe3ef6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-03-05 07:52:41 PST Path: nntp.gmd.de!stern.fokus.gmd.de!ceres.fokus.gmd.de!zib-berlin.de!news.mathworks.com!panix!cmcl2!thecourier.cims.nyu.edu!thecourier.cims.nyu.edu!nobody From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: debugging GNAT programs Date: 5 Mar 1995 10:52:41 -0500 Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Message-ID: <3jcmo9$skq@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> References: <1995Mar2.095243.14051@sei.cmu.edu> <3j85fv$31s@newssvr.cacd.rockwell.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gnat.cs.nyu.edu Date: 1995-03-05T10:52:41-05:00 List-Id: "This step could eventually be skipped IMHO" The step referred to is generating a source program from the binder for the main program (although I think the writer also was under the mis-conception that other Ada compilation went through C). But with regards to the binder, it is *very* important that source code is generated, because it means you can step through the elaboration code just as you would debug any other source code using whatever source level debugger you normally use for the rest of the program. There have been some Ada systems which precisely skipped this step, and as a consequence debugging the elaboration code could be tricky. We think it is a definite advantage to generate source for the main program, and have no intention of changing it. As I mentioned before, we do intend to have the option of generating the main program in Ada (indeed we will probably make this the deault), but that's for later. We have introduced attributes that let an Ada program call the elaboration routines for packages precisely so that the main program can easily be written in Ada. Apart from the conceptual clarification of having the Ada main program be in Ada, there is in some environments a real advantage in disk cache usage in not having to load the C compiler to compile simple Ada programs. This point was discussed extensively in a thread on CLA some months ago (along with an extensive philosophical discussion in which others felt that generating the main program in C somehow declared that C was a superior language to Ada -- not quite sure I ever managed to follow that logic, but anyway we do intend to "fix" this "problem". Note that we will still leave the option to generate a main program in C, because in some mixed language environments this has advantages.